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Today's
Stories
February 18, 2004
Greg Weiher
Why is Kerry Getting a Pass?
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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February
18, 2004
"It's Time to
Get Over It"
Kerry
Tells Anti-War Movement to Move On
By MARK HAND
Researchers and investigative reporters are fascinated
with the neoconservatives, that group of American empire peddlers
who turned George W. Bush into a junkie war criminal. A similar
group, the New Democrats, has been pushing its own dangerous
brand of U.S. hegemony but with much less fanfare.
The leading mouthpiece for the New Democrats'
radical interventionist program could be our next president.
John Kerry, the frontrunner in the quest for the Democratic Party
presidential nomination, has been promoting a foreign policy
perspective called "progressive internationalism."
It's a concept concocted by establishment Democrats seeking to
convince potential backers in the corporate and political world
that, if installed in the White House, they would seek to preserve
U.S. power and influence around the world, but in a kinder, gentler
fashion than the current administration.
In the battle to control the American
empire, the neocons have in their corner the Project for a New
American Century while the New Democrats have the Progressive
Policy Institute. Come November, who will get your vote?
Coke or Pepsi?
In fall 2000, PNAC released Rebuilding
America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New
Century. It's a blueprint for "maintaining global U.S.
preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and
shaping the international security order in line with American
principles and interests."
In fall 2003, members of PPI joined with
other tough-minded Democrats to unveil Progressive
Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Strategy,
a 19-page manifesto that calls for "the bold exercise of
American power, not to dominate but to shape alliances and international
institutions that share a common commitment to liberal values."
The New Democrats don't begrudge the
Bush administration for invading Iraq. They take issue with the
Bush administration's strategy of refusing to invite key members
of the international community to the invasion of Iraq until
it was too late. The neocons' unilateralist approach, the New
Democrats believe, will do ultimately harm U.S. political and
economic dominance around the world.
"We are confident that a new Democratic
strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of muscular internationalism,
can keep Americans safer than the Republicans' go-it-alone policy,
which has alienated our natural allies and overstretched our
resources," the New Democrats say in their foreign policy
manifesto. "We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of U.S.
global leadership by harnessing America's awesome power to universal
values of liberal democracy. A new progressive internationalism
can point the way."
Proponents of "progressive internationalism"
are a lock to control leadership positions at the State Department
and key civilian posts at the Pentagon in a John Kerry administration.
How do we know this? Because these New Democrats obviously ghostwrote
Kerry's campaign book, A
Call to Service: My Vision for A Better America. Place the
Progressive Internationalism manifesto and Kerry's chapter on
foreign policy side by side and you'll immediately notice the
similarities.
On page 40 of In A Call to Service,
Kerry writes: "The time has come to renew that tradition
and revive a bold vision of progressive internationalism."
What is this tradition to which Kerry refers? As he describes
it, Democrats need to honor "the tough-minded strategy of
international engagement and leadership forged by Wilson and
Roosevelt in the two world wars and championed by Truman and
Kennedy in the cold war."
Now, turn to page 3 of the New Democrats'
manifesto. It reads:
"As Democrats, we are proud of our
party's tradition of tough-minded internationalism and strong
record in defending America. Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman led the United States to victory
in two world wars and designed the post-war international institutions
that have been a cornerstone of global security and prosperity
ever since. President Truman forged democratic alliances such
as NATO that eventually triumphed in the Cold War. President
Kennedy epitomized America's commitment to "the survival
and success of liberty."
Like the neocons, Kerry was not impressed
by France's stance against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. On page
51 of his book, he writes:
"I hope by the time you read this
book that the UN has been usefully employed as a partner in the
reconstruction of Iraq and that Jacque Chirac has ceased his
foolish rebellion against the very idea of the Atlantic Alliance.
America, which has always shown magnanimity in victory, should
in turn meet repentant Europeans halfway, not ratchet up the
badgering unilateralism that fed European fears in the first
place."
There's much to digest in this paragraph.
Perhaps the most interesting nugget is Kerry's statement that
the United States should "meet repentant Europeans halfway."
Hmmm, John, could you elaborate on what sins the Europeans committed
for which they must repent?
On page 50, Kerry details his beef with
Old Europe:
"The Bush administration is by no
means the only culprit in the breakdown in U.S.-UN relations
over Iraq. France, Germany and Russia never supported or offered
a feasible policy to verify that UN resolutions on Iraq were
actually being carried out. Our British, Spanish and Eastern
European coalition allies are eager to rebuild European unity."
Throughout the foreign policy sections
of the book, Kerry does his best to convince the reader that
he would not run from his role as war criminal in chief if elected
president.
Perhaps the most repulsive section of
the book is where Kerry discusses the Vietnam War and the antiwar
movement. On page 42, Kerry writes:
"I could never agree with those
in the antiwar movement who dismissed our troops as war criminals
or our country as the villain in the drama. That's one reason,
in fact, that I eventually parted ways with the VVAW [Vietnam
Veterans Against the War] organizations and instead helped found
the Vietnam Veterans of America."
If the United States was not a villain
in the "drama" of the Vietnam war, then who is to blame
for the million-plus Vietnamese who were killed during the 20-year
period of U.S. aggression that ended 1975? Surely, John, you
don't wish to blame certain communist dead-enders in Vietnam
for the carnage?
On the next page, Kerry informs his reader
that it's time we stop questioning U.S. foreign policy intentions:
"As a veteran of both the Vietnam
War and the Vietnam protest movement, I say to both conservative
and liberal misinterpretations of that war that it's time to
get over it and recognize it as an exception, not as a ruling
example, of the U.S. military engagements of the twentieth century.
If those of us who carried the physical and emotional burdens
of that conflict can regain perspective and move on, so can those
whose involvement was vicarious or who knew nothing of the war
other than ideology and legend."
This last passage is probably the most
unsettling part of Kerry's book and one that every advocate of
the Anyone-But-Bush 2004 election strategy should read before
heading to the polling station in November.
In this one passage, Kerry seeks to justify
the millions of people slaughtered by the U.S. military and its
surrogates during the twentieth century, suggests that concern
about U.S. war crimes in Vietnam is no longer necessary, and
dismisses the antiwar movement as the work of know-nothings.
Kerry and his comrades in the progressive
internationalist movement are as gung-ho about U.S. military
action as their counterparts in the White House. The only noteworthy
difference between the two groups battling for power in Washington
is that the neocons are willing to pursue their imperial ambitions
in full view of the international community, while the progressive
internationalists prefer to keep their imperial agenda hidden
behind the cloak of multilateralism.
Mark Hand
is editor of Press Action.
He can be reached at mark@pressaction.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
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